The Project Gutenberg EBook of Evolution Of The Japanese, Social And
Psychic, by Sidney L. Gulick

This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.net


Title: Evolution Of The Japanese, Social And Psychic

Author: Sidney L. Gulick

Release Date: October 22, 2004 [EBook #13831]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1

*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK EVOLUTION OF THE JAPANESE, ***




Produced by Michael Ciesielski and the PG Online Distributed
Proofreading Team.








EVOLUTION OF THE JAPANESE


+----------------------------------------------------------------+
|                 THE GROWTH OF THE KINGDOM OF GOD               |
|                               By                               |
|                                                                |
|                     SIDNEY L. GULICK, M.A.                     |
|                                                                |
|  Illustrated with Twenty-six Diagrams _12 mo, Cloth, $1.50_    |
|                                                                |
| "Commends itself to thoughtful, earnest men of any nation as a |
|     most valuable missionary paper. Mr. Gulick traces the      |
|  Christian religion through history and up to now. The survey  |
|   is calm, patient, thoroughly honest, and quietly assured."   |
|   --_Evangelist_.                                              |
|                                                                |
|                   FLEMING H. REVELL COMPANY                    |
|                                                                |
|                           Publishers                           |
|                                                                |
+----------------------------------------------------------------+


EVOLUTION OF THE JAPANESE

_SOCIAL AND PSYCHIC_

BY

SIDNEY L. GULICK, M.A.

_Missionary of the American Board in Japan_


[Illustration]

NEW YORK CHICAGO TORONTO

Fleming H. Revell Company

LONDON AND EDINBURGH


New York: 158 Fifth Avenue Chicago: 63 Washington Street Toronto: 27
Richmond Street, W. London: 21 Paternoster Square Edinburgh: 30 St.
Mary Street




PREFACE

The present work is an attempt to interpret the characteristics of
modern Japan in the light of social science. It also seeks to throw
some light on the vexed question as to the real character of so-called
race-nature, and the processes by which that nature is transformed. If
the principles of social science here set forth are correct, they
apply as well to China and India as to Japan, and thus will bear
directly on the entire problem of Occidental and Oriental social
intercourse and mutual influence.

The core of this work consists of addresses to American and English
audiences delivered by the writer during his recent furlough. Since
returning to Japan, he has been able to give but fragments of time to
the completion of the outlines then sketched, and though he would
gladly reserve the manuscript for further elaboration, he yields to
the urgency of friends who deem it wise that he delay no longer in
laying his thought before the wider public.

To Japanese readers the writer wishes to say that although he has not
hesitated to make statements painful to a lover of Japan, he has not
done it to condemn or needlessly to criticise, but simply to make
plain what seem to him to be the facts. If he has erred in his facts
or if his interpretations reflect unjustly on the history or spirit of
Japan, no one will be more glad than he for corrections. Let the
Japanese be assured that his ruling motive, both in writing about
Japan and in spending his life in this land, is profound love for the
Japanese people. The term "native" has been freely used because it is
the only natural correlative for "foreign." It may be well to say that
neither the one nor the other has any derogatory implication,
although anti-foreign natives, and anti-native foreigners, sometimes
so use them.

The indebtedness of the writer is too great to be acknowledged in
detail. But whenever he has been conscious of drawing directly from
any author for ideas or suggestions, effort has been made to indicate
the source.

Since the preparation of the larger part of this work several
important contributions to the literature on Japan have appeared which
would have been of help to the writer, could he have referred to them
during the progress of his undertaking. Rev. J.C.C. Newton's "Japan:
Country, Court, and People"; Rev. Otis Cary's "Japan and Its
Regeneration"; and Prof. J. Nitobe's "Bushido: The Soul of Japan,"
call for special mention. All are excellent works, interesting,
condensed, informative, and well-balanced. Had the last named come to
hand much earlier it would have received frequent reference and
quotation in the body of this volume, despite the fact that it sets
forth an ideal rather than the actual state of Old Japan.

Special acknowledgment should be made of the help rendered by my
brothers, Galen M. Fisher and Edward L. Gulick, and by my sister, Mrs.
F.F. Jewett, in reading and revising the manuscript. Acknowledgment
should also be made of the invaluable criticisms and suggestions in
regard to the general theory of social evolution advocated in these
pages made by my uncle, Rev. John T. Gulick, well known to the
scientific world for his contributions to the theory as well as to the
facts of biological evolution.

S.L.G.

MATSUYAMA, JAPAN.




CONTENTS

INTRODUCTION 13


I. PRELIMINARY CONSIDERATIONS

Occidental conceptions of the recent history of Japan--Japan seems to
be contradicting our theory of national evolution--Similarities of
ancient and modern Japan--Japanese evolution is "natural"--The study
of Japanese social evolution is of unusual interest, because it has
experienced such marked changes--Because it is now in a stage of rapid
growth--And is taking place before our eyes--Also because here is
taking place a unique union of Occidental and Oriental
civilizations--Comparison between India and Japan, 23


II. HISTORICAL SKETCH

Mythology and tradition--Authentic history--Old Japan--The transition
from Old to New Japan--New Japan--Compelled by foreign nations to
centralize--Ideals and material instruments supplied from
abroad--Exuberant Patriotism--"Ai-koku-shin," 35


III. THE PROBLEM OF PROGRESS

Is Japan making progress?--Happiness as a criterion--The oppressive
rule of militarism--The emptiness of the ordinary life--The condition
of woman--"The Greater Learning for Woman"--Divorce--Progress
defined--Deficiency of the hedonistic criterion of progress, 52


IV. THE METHOD OF PROGRESS

Progress a modern conception and ideal--How was the "cake of custom"
broken?--"Government by discussion" an insufficient principle of
progress--Two lines of progress, Ideal and Material--The significance
of Perry's coming to Japan--Effect on Japan of Occidental ideas--The
material element of progress--Mistaken praise of the simplicity of Old
Japan, L. Hearn--The significance of the material element of
civilization--Mastery of nature--The defect of Occidental
civilization, 61


V. JAPANESE SENSITIVENESS TO ENVIRONMENT

Our main question--Illustrations--Japanese students
abroad--Sensitiveness to ridicule--Advantages and disadvantages of
this characteristic--National sensitiveness to foreign
criticism--Nudity--Formosa--Mental and physical
flexibility--Adjustability--Some apparent exceptions--Chinese
ideographs--How account for these characteristics, 72


VI. WAVES OF FEELING--ABDICATION

The Japanese are emotional--An illustration from politics--The
tendency to run to extremes--Danger of overemphasizing this
tendency--Japanese silent dissent--Men of balance in public
life--Abdication--Gubbins quoted--Is abdication an inherent trait? 82


VII. HEROES AND HERO-WORSHIP

Popular national heroes--The craving for modern heroes--Townsend
Harris's insight into Oriental character--Hero-worship an obstacle to
missionary work--Capt. Jaynes--An experience in Kumamoto--"The sage of
Omi"--"The true hero"--Moral heroes in Japan--The advantage and
disadvantage of hero-worship--Modern moral heroes--Hero-worship
depends on personality and idealism--The new social order is producing
new ideals and new heroes, 89


VIII. LOVE FOR CHILDREN

Japanese love for children--Children's festivals--Toys and
toy-stores--Do Japanese love children more than Americans
do?--Importance in Japan of maintaining the family line--The looseness
of the Japanese family tie--Early cessation of demonstrative
affection--Infanticide, 96


IX. MARITAL LOVE

Affection between husband and wife--Occidental and Oriental estimate
of woman contrasted--This a subject easily-misunderstood--Kissing a
social habit unknown in Japan--Demonstrative affection a social, not a
racial characteristic--Some specific illustrations, Dr. Neesima--A
personal experience--Illegitimate children--Fraudulent
registration--Adult adoption--Divorce--Monogamy, polygamy, and
prostitution--Race character, social order, and affection--Position of
women--The social order and affection--The social order and the
valuation of man and woman--The new social order and the valuation of
man--The spread of Christian ideals and the re-organization of the
family, 102


X. CHEERFULNESS--INDUSTRY--TRUTHFULNESS--SUSPICIOUSNESS

Japanese cheerfulness--Festivals--Pessimism existent, but easily
overlooked--The ubiquity of children gives an appearance of
cheerfulness--Industry--Illustrations--Easy-going--Sociological
interpretation--Mutual confidence and trustfulness--Relation to
communalistic feudalism--Changes in the social order and in
character--The American Board's experience in trusting Japanese
honor--The Doshisha and its difficulties--Suspiciousness--Necessary
under the old social order--The need of constant care in conversation,
115


XI. JEALOUSY--REVENGE--HUMANE FEELINGS

Jealousy particularly ascribed to women--How related to the social
order--Is jealousy limited to women?--Revenge--Taught as a moral
duty--Revenge and the new social order--Are the Japanese cruel?--First
impressions--Treatment of the insane--Of lepers--The cruelty and
hardness of heart of Old Japan--Buddhistic teaching and
practice--Buddhist and Christian Orphan Asylums--Treatment of
horses--Torture in Old Japan--Crucifixion and transfixion by
spears--Hard-heartedness cultivated under feudalism--Cruelty and the
humane feelings in the Occident--Abolition of cruel customs in ancient
and in Old Japan--Cruelty a sociological, not a biological
characteristic--The rise of humane feelings--Doctors and
hospitals--Philanthropy, 127


XII. AMBITION--CONCEIT

Ambition, both individual and national--The "Kumamoto
Band"--Self-confidence and conceit--Refined in nature--Illustrations
in the use of English--Readiness of young men to assume grave
responsibilities--A product of the social order--Assumptions of
inferiority by the common people--Obsequiousness--Modern
self-confidence and assumptions not without ground--Self-confidence
and success--Self-confidence and physical size--Young men and the
recent history of Japan--The self-confidence and conceit of Western
nations--The open-mindedness of most Japanese, 137


XIII. PATRIOTISM--APOTHEOSIS--COURAGE

"Yamato-Damashii": "The Soul of Japan"--Patriotism and the recent war
with China--Patriotism of Christian orphans--Mr. Ishii--Patriotism is
for a person, not for country--National patriotism is
modern--Passionate devotion to the Emperor--A gift of 20,000,000 yen
to the Emperor--The constitution derives its authority from the
Emperor--A quotation from Prof. Yamaguchi--Japanese Imperial
succession is of Oriental type--Concubines and children of the
reigning Emperor--Apotheosis, Oriental and Occidental--Apotheosis and
national unity--The political conflict between Imperial and popular
sovereignty--Japanese and Roman apotheosis--Prof. Nash
quoted--Courage--Cultivated in ancient times--A peculiar feature of
Japanese courage--"Harakiri"--E. Griffis quoted--A boy hero--Relation
of courage to social order--Japanese courage not only physical--modern
instance of moral courage, 144


XIV. FICKLENESS--STOLIDITY--STOICISM

Illustrations of fickleness--Prof. Chamberlain's
explanation--Fickleness a modern trait--Continuity of purpose in spite
of changes of method--The youth of those on whom responsibility
rests--Fluctuation of interest in Christianity not a fair
illustration--The period of fluctuation is passing
away--Impassiveness--"Putty faces"--Distinguish between stupidity and
stoicism--Stupid stolidity among the farmers--Easily removed--Social
stolidity cultivated--Demanded by the old social order--The influence
of Buddhism in suppressing expression of emotion--An illustration of
suppressed curiosity--Lack of emotional manifestations when the
Emperor appears in public--Stolidity a social, not a racial trait--A
personal experience--The increased vivacity of Christian
women--Relations of emotional to intellectual development and to the
social order, 159


XV. AESTHETIC CHARACTERISTICS

The wide development of the æsthetic sense in Japan--Japanese æsthetic
development is unbalanced--The sense of smell--Painting--Japanese art
pays slight attention to the human form--Sociological
interpretation--The nude in Japanese art--Relation to the social
order--Art and immorality--Caricature--Fondness for the abnormal in
nature--Abnormal stones--Tosa cocks--Æsthetics of speech--The æsthetic
sense and the use of personal pronouns--Deficiency of the æsthetic
development in regard to speech--Sociological explanations--Close
relation of æsthetics and conduct--Sociological explanation for the
wide development of the æsthetic sense--The classes lived in close
proximity--The spirit of dependence and imitation--Universality of
culture more apparent than real--Defects of æsthetic taste--Defective
etiquette--How accounted for--Old and new conditions--"Western taste
debasing Japanese art"--Illustration of aboriginal æsthetic
defects--Colored photographs--Æsthetic defects of popular shrines--The
æsthetics of music--Experience of the Hawaiian people--Literary
æsthetic development--Aston quoted--Architectural æsthetic
development--Æsthetic development is sociological rather than
biological, 170


XVI. MEMORY--IMITATION

Psychological unity of the East and the West--Brain size and social
evolution--The size of the Japanese brain--Memory--Learning Chinese
characters--Social selection and mnemonic power--Japanese memory in
daily life--Memory of uncivilized and semi-civilized peoples--Hindu
memory--Max Müller quoted--Japanese acquisition of foreign
languages--The argument from language for the social as against the
biological distinction of races--The faculty of imitation; is not to
be despised--Prof. Chamberlain's over-emphasis of Japanese
imitation--Originality in adopting Confucianism and
Buddhism--"Shinshu"--"Nichirenshu"--Adoption of Chinese
philosophy--Dr. Knox's over-emphasis of servile adoption--Our
ignorance of Japanese history of thought--A reason for Occidental
misunderstanding--The incubus of governmental initiative--Relation of
imitation to the social order, 189


XVII. ORIGINALITY--INVENTIVENESS

Originality in art--Authoritative suppression of originality--Townsend
Harris quoted--Suppression of Christianity and of heterodox
Confucianism--Modern suppression of historical research--Yet Japan is
not wholly lacking in originality--Recent discoveries and
inventions--Originality in borrowing from the West--Quotations from a
native paper, 203


XVIII. INDIRECTNESS--"NOMINALITY"

"Roundaboutness"--Some advantages of this
characteristic--Illustrations--Study of English for direct and
accurate habits of thought--Rapid modern growth of
directness--"Nominality"--All Japanese history an illustration--The
Imperial rule only nominal--The daimyo as a figure-head--"Nominality"
in ordinary life--In family relations--Illustrations in Christian
work--A "nominal" express train--"Nominality" and the social order,
210


XIX. INTELLECTUALITY

Do Japanese lack the higher mental faculties?--Evidence of
inventions--Testimony of foreign teachers--Japanese students, at home
and abroad--Readiness in public speech--Powers of generalization in
primitive Japan--"Ri" and "Ki," "In" and "Yo"--Japanese use of Chinese
generalized philosophical terms--Generalization and the social
order--Defective explanation of puerile Oriental science--Relation to
the mechanical memory method of education--High intellectuality
dependent on social order, 218


XX. PHILOSOPHICAL ABILITY

Do Japanese lack philosophical ability?--Some opinions--Some
distinctions--Japanese interest in metaphysical problems--Buddhist and
Confucian metaphysics--Metaphysics and ethics--Japanese students of
Occidental philosophy--A personal experience--"The little
philosopher"--A Buddhist priest--Rarity of original philosophical
ability and even interest--Philosophical ability and the social order
in the West, 225


XXI. IMAGINATION

Some criticisms of Japanese mental traits--Wide range of imaginative
activity--Some salient points--Unbalanced imaginative
development--Prosaic matter-of-factness--Visionariness--Impractical
idealism--Illustrations--An evangelist--A principal--Visionariness in
Christian work--Visionariness in national ambition--Imagination and
optimism--Mr. Lowell's opinion criticised--Fancy and
imagination--Caricature--Imagination and imitation--Sociological
interpretation of visionariness--And of prosaic
matter-of-factness--Communalism and the higher mental
powers--Suppression of the constructive imagination--Racial
intellectual characteristics are social rather than inherent, 233


XXII. MORAL IDEALS

Loyalty and filial piety as moral ideals--Quotations from an ancient
moralist, Muro Kyuso--On the heavenly origin of moral teaching--On
self-control--Knowledge comes through obedience--On the impurity of
ancient literature--On the ideal of the samurai in relation to
trade--Old Japan combined statute and ethical law--"The testament of
Iyeyasu"--Ohashi's condemnation of Western learning for its
impiety--Japanese moral ideals were communal--Truthfulness
undeveloped--Relations of samurai to tradesman--The business standards
are changing with the social order--Ancient Occidental contempt for
trade--Plato and Aristotle, 249


XXIII. MORAL IDEALS (_Continued_)

The social position of woman--Valuation of the individual--Confucian
and Buddhistic teaching in regard to concubinage and
polygamy--Sociological interpretation--Japan not exceptional--Actual
morality of Old Japan--Modern growth of immorality--Note on the
"Social Evil"--No ancient teaching in regard to masculine
chastity--Mr. Hearn's mistaken contention--Filial obedience and
prostitution--How could the social order produce two different moral
ideals?--The new Civil Code on marriage--Divorce--Statistics--Modern
advance of woman--Significance of the Imperial Silver Wedding--The
Wedding of the Prince Imperial--Relation of Buddhism and Confucianism
to moral ideals and practice--The new spirit of Buddhism--Christian
influence on Shinto; Tenri Kyo--The ancient moralists confined their
attention to the rulers--The Imperial Edict in regard to Moral
Education, 258


XXIV. MORAL PRACTICE

The publicity of Japanese life--Public bathing--Personal experience at
a hot-spring--Mr. Hearn on privacy--Individualism and variation from
the moral standard--Standards advancing--Revenge--Modern liberty of
travel--Increase of wealth--Increasing luxury and vice--Increase of
concubinage--Native discussions--Statistics--Business honesty--A
native paper quoted--Some experiences with Christians--Testimony of a
Japanese consul--Difference of gifts to Buddhist and to Christian
institutions--Christian condemnation of Doshisha
mismanagement--Misappropriation of trust funds in the West--Business
honesty and the social order--Fitness of Christianity to the new
social order--A summary--Communal virtues--Individual Vices--The
authority of the moral ideal--Moral characteristics are not inherent,
but social, in nature, 273


XXV. ARE THE JAPANESE RELIGIOUS?

Prof. Pfleiderer's view--Percival Lowell's definition of
religion--Japanese appearance of irreligion due to many
facts--Skeptical attitude of Confucius towards the gods--Ready
acceptance of Western agnosticism--Prof. Chamberlain's assertion that
the Japanese take their religion lightly--Statements concerning
religion by Messrs. Fukuzawa, Kato, and Ito--Statements of Japanese
irreligion are not to be lightly accepted--Incompetence of many
critics--We must study all the religious
phenomena--Pilgrimages--Statistics--Mr. Lowell's criticism of
"peripatetic picnic parties"--Is religion necessarily gloomy?--God and
Buddha shelves universal in Japan--Temples and shrines--Statistics,
286


XXVI. SOME RELIGIOUS PHENOMENA

Stoical training conceals religious emotions--The earnestness of many
suppliants--Buddhistic and Shinto practice of religious ecstasy--The
revolt from Buddhism a religious movement--Muro Kyu-so
quoted--"Heaven's Way"--"God's omnipresence"--Pre-Christian teachers
of Christian truth--Interpretation of modern irreligious
phenomena--Japanese apparent lack of reverence--Not an inherent racial
characteristic--Sketch of Japanese religious
history--Shinto--Buddhism--Confucianism--Christianity--Roman
Catholicism--Protestantism--Religious characteristics are social, not
essential or racial, 296


XXVII. SOME RELIGIOUS CONCEPTIONS

Japanese conceptions as to deity--The number and relation of the gods
to the universe--Did the Japanese have the monotheistic
conception?--Attractiveness of Christian monotheism--Confucian and
Buddhist monism--Religious conception of man--Conception of
sin--Defective terminology--Relation of sin to salvation--"Holy
water"--Holy towels and the spread of disease--The slight connection
between physical and moral pollution--W.E. Griffis quoted--Exaggerated
cleanliness of the Japanese--Public bathing houses--Consciousness of
sin in the sixteenth century--A recent experience--Doctrine of the
future life--Salvation from fate--"Ingwa"--These are important
doctrines--"Mei" (Heaven's decree)--Japan not unique--Sociological
interpretations of religious characteristics, 310


XXVIII. SOME RELIGIOUS PRACTICES

Loyalty and filial piety as religious phenomena--Gratitude as a
religions trait--Hearn quoted--Unpleasant experiences of
ingratitude--Modern suppression of phallicism--Brothels and
prostitutes at popular shrines--The failure of higher ethnic faiths to
antagonize the lower--Suppression of phallicism due to Western
opinion--The significance of this suppression to sociological
theory--Religious liberty--Some history--Inconsistent attitude of the
Educational Department--Virtual establishment of compulsory state
religion--Review and summary--The Japanese ready learners of foreign
religions--The significance of this to sociology--Japanese future
religion is to be Christianity, 322


XXIX. SOME PRINCIPLES OF NATIONAL EVOLUTION

Progress is from smaller to larger communities--Arrest of
development--The necessity of individualism--The relation of communal
to individual development--A possible misunderstanding--The problem of
distribution--Personality, 332


XXX. ARE THE JAPANESE IMPERSONAL?

Assertion of Oriental impersonality--Quotations from Percival
Lowell--Defective and contradictory definitions--Arguments for
impersonality resting on mistaken interpretations--Children's
festivals--Occidental and Oriental method of counting ages--Argument
for impersonality from Japanese art--From the characteristics of the
Japanese family--The bearing of divorce on this argument--Do Japanese
"fall in love"?--Suicide and murder for love--Occidental approval and
Oriental condemnation of "falling in love"--Sociological significance
of divorce and of "falling in love," 344


XXXI. THE JAPANESE NOT IMPERSONAL

The problem stated--Definitions--Remarks on
definitions--Characteristics of a person--Impersonality defined--A
preliminary summary statement--Definitions of Communalism and
Individualism--The argument for "impersonality" from Japanese
politeness--Some difficulties of this interpretation--The sociological
interpretation of politeness--The significance of Japanese
sensitiveness--Altruism as a proof of impersonality--Japanese
selfishness and self-assertiveness--Distinction between communal and
individualistic altruism--Deficiency of personal pronouns as a proof
of impersonality--A possible counter-argument--Substitutes for
personal pronouns--Many personal words in Japanese--Origin of
pronouns, personal and others--The relation of the social order to the
use of personal pronouns--Japanese conceive Nationality only through
Personality--"Strong" and "weak" personality--Strong personalities in
Japan--Feudalism and strong personalities, 356


XXXII. IS BUDDHISM IMPERSONAL?

Self-suppression as a proof of impersonality--Self-suppression cannot
be ascribed to a primitive people--Esoteric Buddhism not
popular--Buddhism emphasized introspection and self-consciousness--Mr.
Lowell on the teaching of Buddha--Consciousness of union with the
Absolute a developed, not a primitive, trait--Buddhist
self-suppression proves a developed self--Buddhist self-salvation and
Christian salvation by faith--Buddhism does not develop rounded
personality--Buddhism attributes no worth to the self--Buddhist mercy
rests on the doctrine of transmigration, not on the inherent worth of
man--Analysis of the diverse elements in the asserted "Impersonality
"--Why Buddhism attributed no value to the self--The Infinite Absolute
Abstraction--Buddhism not impersonal but abstract--Buddhist doctrine
of illusion--Popular Buddhism not philosophical--Relation of "ingwa,"
Fate, to the development of personality--Relation of belief in freedom
to the fact of freedom--Sociological consequences of Buddhist
doctrine, 377


XXXIII. TRACES OF PERSONALITY IN SHINTOISM, BUDDHISM, AND CONFUCIANISM

Human illogicalness providential--Some devices for avoiding the evils
of logical conclusions--Buddhistic actual appeal to personal
self-activity--Practical Confucianism an antidote to Buddhist
poison--Confucian ethics produced strong persons--The personal
conception of deity is widespread--Shinto gods all persons--Popular
Buddhist gods are personal--Confucian "Heaven" implies
personality--The idea of personality not wholly wanting in the
Orient--The idea of divine personality not difficult to impart to a
Japanese--A conversation with a Buddhist priest--Sketch of the
development of Japanese personality--Is personality
inherent?--Intrinsic and phenomenal personality--Note on the doctrine
of the personality of God, 389


XXXIV. THE BUDDHIST WORLD-VIEW

Comparison of Buddhist, Greek, and Christian conceptions of
God--Nirvana--The Buddhistic Ultimate Reality absolute vacuity--Greek
affirmation of intelligence in the Ultimate Reality--Christian
affirmation of Divine Personality--The Buddhist universe is partly
rational and ethical--The Greek universe is partly rational and
ethical--Corresponding views of sin, salvation, change, and
history--Resulting pessimism and optimism--Consequences to the
respective civilizations and their social orders, 398


XXXV. COMMUNAL AND INDIVIDUAL ELEMENTS IN THE EVOLUTION OF JAPANESE
RELIGIOUS LIFE

Japanese religious life has been predominantly communal--Shinto
provided the sanctions for the social order--Recent abdication of
Shinto as a religion--Primitive Shinto world--view--Shinto and modern
science--Shinto sanctions for the modern social order--Buddhism is
individualistic--Lacks social ideals and sanctions--Hence it could not
displace Shinto--Shinto and Buddhism are supplementary--Produced a
period of prosperity--The defect of Buddhist individualism--Imperfect
acceptance of Shinto--Effect of political history--Confucianism
restored the waning communal sanctions--The difference between Shinto
and Confucian social ideals and sanctions--The difference between
Shinto and Confucian world-views--Rejection of the Confucian social
order--An interpretation--The failure of Confucianism to become a
religion--Western intercourse re-established Shinto sanctions--Japan's
modern religious problem--Difficulty of combining individual and
communal religious elements--Christianity has accomplished
it--Individualism in and through communalism--A modern expansion of
communal religion--Shared by Japan--Some Japanese recognize the need
of religion for Japan--Sociological function of individualistic
religion in the higher human evolution--Obstacle to evolution through
the development of intellect--The Japanese mind is outgrowing its old
religious conceptions--The dependence of religious phenomena on the
ideas dominating society--Note on National and Universal
religions--Buddhism not properly classified as Universal--The
classification of religions, 404


XXXVI. WHAT ARE THE ESSENTIAL CHARACTERISTICS OF THE ORIENT

The conclusion reached in this work--Contrary to the opinion of
tourists, residents, and many sociologists--Professor Le Bon
quoted--Social psychic characteristics not inherent--Evolution and
involution--Advocates of inherent Oriental traits should catalogue
those traits--An attempt by the London _Daily Mail_--Is the East
inherently intuitive, and the West logical?--The difficulty of
becoming mutually acquainted--The secret of genuine acquaintance--Is
the East inherently meditative and the West active?--Oriental unity
and characteristics are social, not inherent--Isolated evolution is
divergent--Mutual influence of the East and the West--Summary
statement, 422


XXXVII. GENERAL CONCLUSIONS

Review of our course of thought--Purpose of this chapter--The problem
studied in this work--Interrelation of social and psychic
phenomena--Heredity defined and analyzed--Evolution defined--Exact
definition of our question, and our reply--What would be an adequate
disproof of our position--Reasons for limiting the discussion to
advanced races--Divergent evolution dependent on
segregation--Distinction between racial and social unity--Relation of
the individual psychic character to the social order--"Race soul" a
convenient fiction--Psychic function produces psychic organism--Causes
and nature of plasticity and fixity of society--Relation of incarnate
ideas to character and destiny--Valuelessness of "floating"
ideas--Progress is at once communal and individual--Personality is its
cause, aim, and criterion--Progress in personality is
ethico-religious--Japanese social and psychic evolution not
exceptional, 438




INTRODUCTION


The tragedy enacted in China during the closing year of the nineteenth
century marks an epoch in the history of China and of the world. Two
world-views, two types of civilization met in deadly conflict, and the
inherent weakness of isolated, belated, superstitious and corrupt
paganism was revealed. Moreover, during this, China's crisis, Japan
for the first time stepped out upon the world's stage of political and
military activity. She was recognized as a civilized nation, worthy to
share with the great nations of the earth the responsibility of ruling
the lawless and backward races.

The correctness of any interpretation as to the significance of this
conflict between the opposing civilizations turns, ultimately, on the
question as to what is the real nature of man and of society. If it be
true, as maintained by Prof. Le Bon and his school, that the mental
and moral character of a people is as fixed as its physiological
characteristics, then the conflict in China is at bottom a conflict of
races, not of civilizations.

The inadequacy of the physiological theory of national character may
be seen almost at a glance by a look at Japan. Were an Oriental
necessarily and unchangeably Oriental, it would have been impossible
for Japan to have come into such close and sympathetic touch with the
West.

The conflict of the East with the West, however, is not an inherent
and unending conflict, because it is not racial, but civilizational.
It is a conflict of world-views and systems of thought and life. It is
a conflict of heathen and Christian civilizations. And the conflict
will come to an end as soon as, and in proportion as, China awakes
from her blindness and begins to build her national temple on the
bedrock of universal truth and righteousness. The conflict is
practically over in Japan because she has done this. In loyally
accepting science, popular education, and the rights of every
individual to equal protection by the government, Japan has accepted
the fundamental conceptions of civilization held in the West, and has
thus become an integral part of Christendom, a fact of world-wide
significance. It proves that the most important differences now
separating the great races of men are civilizational, not
physiological. It also proves that European, American, and Oriental
peoples may be possessed by the same great ideals of life and
principles of action, enabling them to co-operate as nations in great
movements to their mutual advantage.

While even we of the West may be long in learning the full
significance of what has been and still is taking place in Japan and
more conspicuously just now, because more tragically, in China, one
thing is clear: steam and electricity have abolished forever the old
isolation of the nations.

Separated branches of the human race that for thousands of years have
been undergoing divergent evolution, producing radically different
languages, customs, civilizations, systems of thought and world-views,
and have resulted even in marked physiological and psychological
differences, are now being brought into close contact and inevitable
conflict. But at bottom it is a conflict of ideas, not of races. The
age of isolation and divergent evolution is passing away, and that of
international association and convergent social evolution has begun.
Those races and nations that refuse to recognize the new social order,
and oppose the cosmic process and its forces, will surely be pushed to
the wall and cease to exist as independent nations, just as, in
ancient times, the tribes that refused to unite with neighboring
tribes were finally subjugated by those that did so unite.

Universal economic, political, intellectual, moral, and religious
intercourse is the characteristic of the new æon on which we are
entering. What are to be the final consequences of this wide
intercourse? Can a people change its character? Can a nation fully
possessed by one type of civilization reject it, and adopt one
radically different? Do races have "souls" which are fixed and
incapable of radical transformations? What has taken place in Japan, a
profound, or only a superficial change in psychical character? Are the
destinies of the Oriental races already unalterably determined?

The answers to these questions have already been suggested in the
preceding paragraphs, in regard to what has already taken place in
Japan. But we may add that that answer really turns on our conception
as to the nature of the characteristics separating the East from the
West. In proportion as national character is reckoned to be
biological, will it be considered fixed and the national destiny
predetermined. In proportion as it is reckoned to be sociological,
will it be considered alterable and the national destiny subject to
new social forces. Now that the intercourse of widely different races
has begun on a scale never before witnessed, it is highly important
for us to know its probable consequences. For this we need to gain a
clear idea of the nature both of the individual man and of society, of
the relation of the social order to individual and to race character,
and of the law regulating and the forces producing social evolution.
Only thus can we forecast the probable course and consequences of the
free social intercourse of widely divergent races.

It is the belief of the writer that few countries afford so clear an
illustration of the principles involved in social evolution as Japan.
Her development has been so rapid and so recent that some principles
have become manifest that otherwise might easily have escaped notice.
The importance of understanding Japan, because of the light her recent
transformations throw on the subject of social evolution and of
national character and also because of the conspicuous rôle to which
she is destined as the natural leader of the Oriental races in their
adoption of Occidental modes of life and thought, justifies a careful
study of Japanese character. He who really understands Japan, has
gained the magic key for unlocking the social mysteries of China and
the entire East. But the Japanese people, with their institutions and
their various characteristics, merit careful study also for their own
sakes. For the Japanese constitute an exceedingly interesting and even
a unique branch of the human race. Japan is neither a purgatory, as
some would have it, nor a paradise, as others maintain, but a land
full of individuals in an interesting stage of social evolution.

Current opinions concerning Japan, however, are as curious as they are
contradictory. Sir Edwin Arnold says that the Japanese "Have the
nature rather of birds or butterflies than of ordinary human beings."
Says Mr. A.M. Knapp: "Japan is the one country in the world which does
not disappoint ... It is unquestionably the unique nation of the
globe, the land of dream and enchantment, the land which could hardly
differ more from our own, were it located in another planet, its
people not of this world." An "old resident," however, calls it "the
land of disappointments." Few phenomena are more curious than the
readiness with which a tourist or professional journalist, after a few
days or weeks of sight-seeing and interviewing, makes up his mind in
regard to the character of the people, unless it be the way in which
certain others, who have resided in this land for a number of years,
continue to live in their own dreamland. These two classes of writers
have been the chief contributors of material for the omnivorous
readers of the West.

It appears to not a few who have lived many years in this Far Eastern
land, that the public has been fed with the dreams of poets or the
snap-judgments of tourists instead of with the facts of actual
experience. A recent editorial article in the _Japan Mail_, than whose
editor few men have had a wider acquaintance with the Japanese people
or language, contains the following paragraph:

     "In the case of such writers as Sir Edwin Arnold and Mr. Lafcadio
     Hearn it is quite apparent that the logical faculty is in
     abeyance. Imagination reigns supreme. As poetic nights or
     outbursts, the works of these authors on Japan are delightful
     reading. But no one who has studied the Japanese in a deeper
     manner, by more intimate daily intercourse with all classes of the
     people than either of these writers pretends to have had, can
     possibly regard a large part of their description as anything more
     than pleasing fancy. Both have given rein to the poetic fancy and
     thus have, from a purely literary point of view, scored a success
     granted to few.... But as exponents of Japanese life and thought
     they are unreliable.... They have given form and beauty to much
     that never existed except in vague outline or in undeveloped germs
     in the Japanese mind. In doing this they have unavoidably been
     guilty of misrepresentation.... The Japanese nation of Arnold and
     Hearn is not the nation we have known for a quarter of a century,
     but a purely ideal one manufactured out of the author's brains. It
     is high time that this was pointed out. For while such works please
     a certain section of the English public, they do a great deal of
     harm among a section of the Japanese public, as could be easily
     shown in detail, did space allow."--_Japan Mail, May 7, 1898_.

But even more harmful to the reading public of England and America are
the hastily formed yet, nevertheless, widely published opinions of
tourists and newspaper correspondents. Could such writers realize the
inevitable limitations under which they see and try to generalize, the
world would be spared many crudities and exaggerations, not to say
positive errors. The impression so common to-day that Japan's recent
developments are anomalous, even contrary to the laws of national
growth, is chiefly due to the superficial writings of hasty observers.
Few of those who have dilated ecstatically on her recent growth have
understood either the history or the genius of her people.

     "To mention but one among many examples," says Prof. Chamberlain,
     "the ingenious Traveling Commissioner of the _Pall Mall Gazette_,
     Mr. Henry Norman, in his lively letters on Japan published nine or
     ten years ago, tells the story of Japanese education under the
     fetching title of 'A Nation at School'; but the impression left is
     that they have been their own schoolmasters. In another letter on
     'Japan in Arms,' he discourses concerning 'The Japanese Military
     Re-organizers,' 'The Yokosuka dockyard,' and other matters, but
     omits to mention that the reorganizers were Frenchmen, and that the
     Yokosuka dockyard was also a French creation. Similarly, when
     treating of the development of the Japanese newspaper, he ignores
     the fact that it owed its origin to an Englishman, which surely, to
     a man whose object was reality, should have seemed an object worth
     recording. These letters, so full and apparently so frank, really
     so deceptive, are, as we have said, but one instance among many of
     the way in which popular writers on Japan travesty history by
     ignoring the part which foreigners have played. The reasons for
     this are not far to seek. A wonderful tale will please folks at a
     distance all the better if made more wonderful still. Japanese
     progress, traced to its causes and explained by references to the
     means employed, is not nearly such fascinating reading as when
     represented in the guise of a fairy creation, sprung from nothing,
     like Aladdin's palace."--"_Things Japanese," p. 116_.

But inter-racial misunderstanding is not, after all, so very strange.
Few things are more difficult than to accommodate one's self in
speech, in methods of life, and even in thought, to an alien people;
so identifying one's deepest interest with theirs as really to
understand them. The minds of most men are so possessed by notions
acquired in childhood and youth as to be unable to see even the
plainest facts at variance with those notions. He who comes to Japan
possessed with the idea that it is a dreamland and that its old social
order was free from defects, is blind to any important facts
invalidating that conception; while he who is persuaded that Japan,
being Oriental, is necessarily pagan at heart, however civilized in
form, cannot easily be persuaded that there is anything praiseworthy
in her old civilization, in her moral or religious life, or in any of
her customs.

If France fails in important respects to understand England; and
England, Germany; and Germany, its neighbors; if even England and
America can so misunderstand one another as to be on the verge of war
over the boundary dispute of an alien country, what hope is there that
the Occident shall understand the Orient, or the Orient the Occident?

Though the difficulty seems insurmountable, I am persuaded that the
most fruitful cause of racial misunderstandings and of defective
descriptions both of the West by Orientals, and of the East by
Occidentals, is a well-nigh universal misconception as to the nature
of man, and of society, and consequently of the laws determining their
development. In the East this error arises from and rests upon its
polytheism, and the accompanying theories of special national creation
and peculiar national sanctity. On these grounds alien races are
pronounced necessarily inferior. China's scorn for foreigners is due
to these ideas.

Although this pagan notion has been theoretically abandoned in the
West, it still dominates the thought not only of the multitudes, but
also of many who pride themselves on their high education and liberal
sentiments. They bring to the support of their national or racial
pride such modern sociological theories as lend themselves to this
view. Evolution and the survival of the fittest, degeneration and the
arrest of development, are appealed to as justifying the arrogance and
domineering spirit of Western nations.

But the most subtle and scholarly doctrine appealed to in support of
national pride is the biological conception of society. Popular
writers assume that society is a biological organism and that the laws
of its evolution are therefore biological. This assumption is not
strange, for until recent times the most advanced professional
sociologists have been dominated by the same misconception. Spencer,
for example, makes sociology a branch of biology. More recent
sociological writers, however, such as Professors Giddings and
Fairbanks, have taken special pains to assert the essentially psychic
character of society; they reject the biological conception, as
inadequate to express the real nature of society. The biological
conception, they insist, is nothing more than a comparison, useful for
bringing out certain features of the social life and structure, but
harmful if understood as their full statement. The laws of psychic
activity and development differ as widely from those of biologic
activity and development as these latter do from those that hold in
the chemical world. If the laws which regulate psychic development and
the progress of civilization were understood by popular writers on
Japan, and if the recent progress of Japan had been stated in the
terms of these laws, there would not have been so much mystification
in the West in regard to this matter as there evidently has been.
Japan would not have appeared to have "jumped out of her skin," or
suddenly to have escaped from the heredity of her past millenniums of
development. This wide misunderstanding of Japan, then, is not simply
due to the fact that "Japanese progress, traced to its causes and
explained by reference to the means employed, is not nearly such
fascinating reading as when represented in the guise of a fairy
creation," but it is also due to the still current popular view that
the social organism is biological, and subject therefore to the laws
of biological evolution. On this assumption, some hold that the
progress of Japan, however it may appear, is really superficial, while
others represent it as somehow having evaded the laws regulating the
development of other races. A nation's character and characteristics
are conceived to be the product of brain-structure; these can change
only as brain structure changes. Brain is held to determine
civilization, rather than civilization brain. Hampered by this
defective view, popular writers inevitably describe Japan to the West
in terms that necessarily misrepresent her, and that at the same time
pander to Occidental pride and prejudice.

But this misunderstanding of Japan reveals an equally profound
misunderstanding in regard to ourselves. Occidental peoples are
supposed to be what they are in civilization and to have reached their
high attainments in theoretical and applied science, in philosophy and
in practical politics, because of their unique brain-structures,
brains secured through millenniums of biological evolution. The
following statement may seem to be rank heresy to the average
sociologist, but my studies have led me to believe that the main
differences between the great races of mankind to-day are not due to
biological, but to social conditions; they are not
physico-psychological differences, but only socio-psychological
differences. The Anglo-Saxon is what he is because of his social
heredity, and the Chinaman is what he is because of his social
heredity. The profound difference between social and physiological
heredity and evolution is unappreciated except by a few of the most
recent sociological writers. The part that association, social
segregation, and social heredity take in the maintenance, not only of
once developed languages and civilizations, but even in their genesis,
has been generally overlooked.

But a still more important factor in the determination of social and
psychic evolution, generally unrecognized by sociologists, is the
nature and function of personality. Although in recent years it has
been occasionally mentioned by several eminent writers, personality as
a principle has not been made the core of any system of sociology. In
my judgment, however, this is the distinctive characteristic of human
evolution and of human association, and it should accordingly be the
fundamental principle of social science. Many writers on the East have
emphasized what they call its "impersonal" characteristics. So
important is this subject that I have considered it at length in the
body of this work.

Sociological phenomena cannot be fully expressed by any combination of
exclusively physical, biological, and psychic terms, for the
significant element of man and of society consists of something more
than these--namely, personality. It is this that differentiates human
from animal evolution. The unit of human sociology is a
self-conscious, self-determinative being. The causative factor in the
social evolution of man is his personality. The goal of that evolution
is developed personality. Personality is thus at once the cause and
the end of social progress. The conditions which affect or determine
progress are those which affect or determine personality.

The biological evolution of man from the animal has been, it is true,
frankly assumed in this work. No attempt is made to justify this
assumption. Let not the reader infer, however, that the writer
similarly assumes the adequacy of the so-called naturalistic or
evolutionary origin of ethics, of religion, or even of social
progress. It may be doubted whether Darwin, Wallace, Le Conte, or any
exponent of biological evolution has yet given a complete statement of
the factors of the physiological evolution of man. It is certain,
however, that ethical, religious, and social writers who have striven
to account for the higher evolution of man, by appealing to factors
exclusively parallel to those which have produced the physiological
evolution of man, have conspicuously failed. However much we may find
to praise in the social interpretations of such eminent writers as
Comte, Spencer, Ward, Fiske, Giddings, Kidd, Southerland, or even
Drummond, there still remains the necessity of a fuller consideration
of the moral and religious evolution of man. The higher evolution of
man cannot be adequately expressed or even understood in any terms
lower than those of personality.




EVOLUTION OF THE JAPANESE

I

PRELIMINARY CONSIDERATIONS


Said a well educated and widely read Englishman to the writer while in
Oxford, "Can you explain to me how it is that the Japanese have
succeeded in jumping out of their skins?" And an equally thoughtful
American, speaking about the recent strides in civilization made by
Japan, urged that this progress could not be real and genuine. "How
can such a mushroom-growth, necessarily without deep roots in the
past, be real and strong and permanent? How can it escape being
chiefly superficial?" These two men are typical of much of the thought
of the West in regard to Japan.

Seldom, perhaps never, has the civilized world so suddenly and
completely reversed an estimate of a nation as it has that with
reference to Japan. Before the recent war, to the majority even of
fairly educated men, Japan was little more than a name for a few small
islands somewhere near China, whose people were peculiar and
interesting. To-day there is probably not a man, or woman, or child
attending school in any part of the civilized world, who does not know
the main facts about the recent war: how the small country and the men
of small stature, sarcastically described by their foes as "Wojen,"
pygmy, attacked the army and navy of a country ten times their size.

Such a universal change of opinion regarding a nation, especially
regarding one so remote from the centers of Western civilization as
Japan, could not have taken place in any previous generation. The
telegraph, the daily paper, the intelligent reporters and writers of
books and magazine articles, the rapid steam travel and the many
travelers--all these have made possible this sudden acquisition of
knowledge and startling reversal of opinion.

There is reason, however, to think that much misapprehension and real
ignorance still exists about Japan and her leap into power and
world-wide prestige. Many seem to think that Japan has entered on her
new career through the abandonment of her old civilization and the
adoption of one from the West--that the victories on sea and land, in
Korea, at Port Arthur, and a Wei-hai-wei, and more recently at
Tientsin and Pekin, were solely due to her Westernized navy and army.
Such persons freely admit that this process of Westernization had been
going on for many years more rapidly than the world at large knew, and
that consequently the reputation of Japan before the war was not such
as corresponded with her actual attainments. But they assume that
there was nothing of importance in the old civilization; that it was
little superior to organized barbarism.

These people conceive of the change which has taken place in Japan
during the past thirty years as a revolution, not as an evolution; as
an abandonment of the old, and an adoption of the new, civilization.
They conceive the old tree of civilization to have been cut down and
cast into the fire, and a new tree to have been imported from the West
and planted in Japanese soil. New Japan is, from this view-point, the
new tree.

Not many months ago I heard of a wealthy family in Kyoto which did not
take kindly to the so-called improvements imported from abroad, and
which consequently persisted in using the instruments of the older
civilization. Even such a convenience as the kerosene lamp, now
universally adopted throughout the land of the Rising Sun, this family
refused to admit into its home, preferring the old-style andon with
its vegetable oil, dim light, and flickering flame. Recently, however,
an electric-light company was organized in that city, and this
brilliant illuminant was introduced not only into the streets and
stores, but into many private houses. Shortly after its introduction,
the family was converted to the superiority of the new method of
illumination, and passed at one leap from the old-style lantern to the
latest product of the nineteenth century. This incident is considered
typical of the transformations characteristic of modern Japan. It is
supposed that New Japan is in no proper sense the legitimate product
through evolution of Old Japan.

In important ways, therefore, Japan seems to be contradicting our
theories of national growth. We have thought that no "heathen" nation
could possibly gain, much less wield, unaided by Westerners, the
forces of civilized Christendom. We have likewise held that national
growth is a slow process, a gradual evolution, extending over scores
and centuries of years. In both respects our theories seem to be at
fault. This "little nation of little people," which we have been so
ready to condemn as "heathen" and "uncivilized," and thus to despise,
or to ignore, has in a single generation leaped into the forefront of
the world's attention.

Are our theories wrong? Is Japan an exception? Are our facts correct?
We instinctively feel that something is at fault. We are not satisfied
with the usual explanation of the recent history of Japan. We are
perhaps ready to concede that "the rejection of the old and the
adoption of Western civilization" is the best statement whereby to
account for the new power of Japan and her new position among the
nations, but when we stop to think, we ask whether we have thus
explained that for which we are seeking an explanation? Do not the
questions still remain--Why did the Japanese so suddenly abandon
Oriental for Occidental civilization? And what mental and other traits
enabled a people who, according to the supposition, were far from
civilized, so suddenly to grasp and wield a civilization quite alien
in character and superior to their own; a civilization ripened after
millenniums of development of the Aryan race? And how far, as a matter
of fact, has this assimilation gone? Not until these questions are
really answered has the explanation been found, So that, after all,
the prime cause which we must seek is not to be found in the external
environment, but rather in the internal endowment.

An effort to understand the ancient history of Japan encounters the
same problem as that raised by her modern history. What mental
characteristics led the Japanese a thousand years ago so to absorb the
Chinese civilization, philosophy, and language that their own suffered
a permanent arrest? What religious traits led them so to take on a
religion from China and India that their own native religion never
passed beyond the most primitive development, either in doctrine, in
ethics, in ritual, or in organization? On the other hand, what mental
characteristics enabled them to preserve their national independence
and so to modify everything brought from abroad, from the words of the
new language to the philosophy of the new religions, that Japanese
civilization, language, and religion are markedly distinct from the
Chinese? Why is it that, though the Japanese so fell under the bondage
of the Chinese language as permanently to enslave and dwarf their own
beautiful tongue, expressing the dominant thought of every sentence
with characters (ideographs) borrowed from China, yet at the same time
so transformed what they borrowed that no Chinaman can read and
understand a Japanese book or newspaper?

The same questions recur at this new period of Japan's national life.
Why has she so easily turned from the customs of centuries? What are
the mental traits that have made her respond so differently from her
neighbor to the environment of the nineteenth-century civilization of
the West Why is it that Japan has sent thousands of her students to
these Western lands to see and study and bring back all that is good
in them, while China has remained in stolid self-satisfaction, seeing
nothing good in the West and its ways? To affirm that the difference
is due to the environment alone is impossible, for the environment
seems to be essentially the same. This difference of attitude and
action must be traced, it would seem, to differences of mental and
temperamental characteristics. Those who seek to understand the
secret of Japan's newly won power and reputation by looking simply at
her newly acquired forms of government, her reconstructed national
social structure, her recently constructed roads and railroads,
telegraphs, representative government, etc., and especially at her
army and navy organized on European models and armed with European
weapons, are not unlike those who would discover the secret of human
life by the study of anatomy.

This external view and this method of interpretation are, therefore,
fundamentally erroneous. Never, perhaps, has the progress of a nation
been so manifestly an evolution as distinguished from a revolution. No
foreign conquerors have come in with their armies, crushing down the
old and building up a new civilization. No magician's wand has been
waved over the land to make the people forget the traditions of a
thousand years and fall in with those of the new régime. No rite or
incantation has been performed to charm the marvelous tree of
civilization and cause it to take root and grow to such lofty
proportions in an unprepared soil.

In contrast to the defective views outlined above, one need not
hesitate to believe that the actual process by which Old Japan has
been transformed into New Japan is perfectly natural and necessary. It
has been a continuous growth; it is not the mere accumulation of
external additions; it does not consist alone of the acquisition of
the machinery and the institutions of the Occident. It is rather a
development from within, based upon already existing ideas and
institutions. New Japan is the consequence of her old endowment and
her new environment. Her evolution has been in progress and can be
traced for at least a millennium and a half, during which she has been
preparing for this latest step. All that was necessary for its
accomplishment was the new environment. The correctness of this view
and the reasons for it will appear as we proceed in our study of
Japanese characteristics. But we need to note at this point the
danger, into which many fall, of ascribing to Japan an attainment of
western civilization which the facts will not warrant. She has
secured much, but by no means all, that the West has to give.

We may suggest our line of thought by asking what is the fundamental
element of civilization? Does it consist in the manifold appliances
that render life luxurious; the railroad, the telegraph, the post
office, the manufactures, the infinite variety of mechanical and other
conveniences? Or is it not rather the social and intellectual and
ethical state of a people? Manifestly the latter. The tools indeed of
civilization may be imported into a half-civilized, or barbarous
country; such importation, however, does not render the country
civilized, although it may assist greatly in the attainment of that
result. Civilization being mental, social, and ethical, can arise only
through the growth of the mind and character of the vast multitudes of
a nation. Now has Japan imported only the tools of civilization? In
other words, is her new civilization only external, formal, nominal,
unreal? That she has imported much is true. Yet that her attainments
and progress rest on her social, intellectual, and ethical development
will become increasingly clear as we take up our successive chapters.
Under the new environment of the past fifty years, this growth,
particularly in intellectual, in industrial, and in political lines,
has been exceedingly rapid as compared with the growths of other
peoples.

This conception of the rise of New Japan will doubtless approve itself
to every educated man who will allow his thought to rest upon the
subject. For all human progress, all organic evolution, proceeds by
the progressive modification of the old organs under new conditions.
The modern locomotive did not spring complete from the mind of James
Watt; it is the result of thousands of years of human experience and
consequent evolution, beginning first perhaps with a rolling log,
becoming a rude cart, and being gradually transformed by successive
inventions until it has become one of the marvels of the nineteenth
century. It is impossible for those who have attained the view-point
of modern science to conceive of discontinuous progress; of
continually rising types of being, of thought, or of moral life, in
which the higher does not find its ground and root and thus an
important part of its explanation, in the lower. Such is the case not
only with reference: to biological evolution; it is especially true of
social evolution. He who would understand the Japan of to-day cannot
rest with the bare statement that her adoption of the tools and
materials of Western civilization has given her her present power and
place among the nations. The student with historical insight knows
that it is impossible for one nation, off-hand, without preparation,
to "adopt the civilization" of another.

The study of the evolution of Japan is one of unusual interest; first,
because of the fact that Japan has experienced such unique changes in
her environment. Her history brings into clear light some principles
of evolution which the visual development of a people does not make so
clear.

In the second place, New Japan is in a state of rapid growth. She is
in a critical period, resembling a youth, just coming to manhood, when
all the powers of growth are most vigorous. The latent qualities of
body and mind and heart then burst forth with peculiar force. In the
course of four or five short years the green boy develops into a
refined and noble man; the thoughtless girl ripens into the full
maturity of womanhood and of motherhood. These are the years of
special interest to those who would observe nature in her time of most
critical activity.

Not otherwise is it in the life of nations. There are times when their
growth is phenomenally rapid; when their latent qualities are
developed; when their growth can be watched with special ease and
delight, because so rapid. The Renaissance was such a period in
Europe. Modern art, science, and philosophy took their start with the
awakening of the mind of Europe at that eventful and epochal period of
her life. Such, I take it, is the condition of Japan to-day. She is
"being born again"; undergoing her "renaissance." Her intellect,
hitherto largely dormant, is but now awaking. Her ambition is equaled
only by her self-reliance. Her self-confidence and amazing
expectations have not yet been sobered by hard experience. Neither
does she, nor do her critics, know how much she can or cannot do. She
is in the first flush of her new-found powers; powers of mind and
spirit, as well as of physical force. Her dreams are gorgeous with all
the colors of the rainbow. Her efforts are sure, to be noble in
proportion as her ambitions are high. The growth of the past
half-century is only the beginning of what we may expect to see.

Then again, this latest and greatest step in the evolution of Japan
has taken place at a time unparalleled for opportunities of
observation, under the incandescent light of the nineteenth century,
with its thousands of educated men to observe and record the facts,
many of whom are active agents in the evolution in progress. Hundreds
of papers and magazines, native and European, read by tens of
thousands of intelligent men and women, have kept the world aware of
the daily and hourly events. Telegraphic dispatches and letters by the
million have passed between the far East and the West. It would seem
as if the modernizing of Japan had been providentially delayed until
the last half of the nineteenth century with its steam and
electricity, annihilators of space and time, in order that her
evolution might be studied with a minuteness impossible in any
previous age, or by any previous generation. It is almost as if one
were conducting an experiment in human evolution in his own
laboratory, imposing the conditions and noting the results.

For still another reason is the evolution of New Japan of special
interest to all intelligent persons. To illustrate great things by
small, and human by physical, no one who has visited Geneva has failed
to see the beautiful mingling of the Arve and the Rhone. The latter
flowing from the calm Geneva lake is of delicate blue, pure and
limpid. The former, running direct from the glaciers of Mont Blanc and
the roaring bed of Chamouni, bears along in its rushing waters
powdered rocks and loosened soil. These rivers, though joined in one
bed, for hundreds of rods are quite distinct; the one, turbid; the
other, clear as crystal; yet they press each against the other, now a
little of the Rhone's clear current forces its way into the Arve, soon
to be carried off, absorbed and discolored by the mass of muddy water
around it. Now a little of the turbid Arve forces its way into the
clear blue Rhone, to lose there its identity in the surrounding
waters. The interchange goes on, increasing with the distance until,
miles below, the two-rivers mingle as one. No longer is it the Arve or
the old Rhone, but the new Rhone.

In Japan there is going on to-day a process unique in the history of
the human race. Two streams of civilization, that of the far East and
that of the far West, are beginning to flow in a single channel. These
streams are exceedingly diverse, in social structure, in government,
in moral ideals and standards, in religion, in psychological and
metaphysical conceptions. Can they live together? Or is one going to
drive out and annihilate the other? If so, which will be victor? Or is
there to be modification of both? In other words, is there to be a new
civilization--a Japanese, an Occidento-Oriental civilization?

The answer is plain to him who has eyes with which to see. Can the
Ethiopian change his skin or the leopard his spots? No more can Japan
lose all trace of inherited customs of daily life, of habits of
thought and language, products of a thousand years of training in
Chinese literature, Buddhist doctrine, and Confucian ethics. That "the
boy is father to the man" is true of a nation no less than of an
individual. What a youth has been at home in his habits of thought, in
his purpose and spirit and in their manifestation in action, will
largely determine his after-life. In like manner the mental and moral
history of Japan has so stamped certain characteristics on her
language, on her thought, and above all on her temperament and
character, that, however she may strive to Westernize herself, it is
impossible for her to obliterate her Oriental features. She will
inevitably and always remain Japanese.

Japan has already produced an Occidento-Oriental civilization. Time
will serve progressively to Occidentalize it. But there is no reason
for thinking that it will ever become wholly Occidentalized. A
Westerner visiting Japan will always be impressed with its Oriental
features, while an Asiatic will be impressed with its Occidental
features. This progressive Occidentalization of Japan will take place
according to the laws of social evolution, of which we must speak
somewhat more fully in a later chapter.

An important question bearing on this problem is the precise nature of
the characteristics differentiating the Occident and the Orient. What
exactly do we mean when we say that the Japanese are Oriental and will
always bear the marks of the Orient in their civilization, however
much they may absorb from the West? The importance and difficulty of
this question have led the writer to defer its consideration till
toward the close of this work.

If one would gain adequate conception of the process now going on, the
illustration already used of the mingling of two rivers needs to be
supplemented by another, corresponding to a separate class of facts.
Instead of the mingling of rivers, let us watch the confluence of two
glaciers. What pressures! What grindings! What upheavals! What
rendings! Such is the mingling of two civilizations. It is not smooth
and Noiseless, but attended with pressure and pain. It is a collision
in more ways than one. The unfortunates on whom the pressures of both
currents are directed are often quite destroyed.

Comparison is often made between Japan and India. In both countries
enormous social changes are taking place; in both, Eastern and Western
civilizations are in contact and in conflict. The differences,
however, are even more striking than the likenesses. Most conspicuous
is the fact that whereas, in India, the changes in civilization are
due almost wholly to the force and rule of the conquering race, in
Japan these changes are spontaneous, attributable entirely to the
desire and initiative of the native rulers. This difference is
fundamental and vital. The evolution of society in India is to a large
degree compulsory; in a true sense it is an artificial evolution. In
Japan, on the other hand, evolution is natural. There has not been
the slightest physical compulsion laid on her from without. With two
rare exceptions, Japan has never heard the boom of foreign cannon
carrying destruction to her people. During these years of change,
there have been none but Japanese rulers, and such has been the case
throughout the entire period of Japanese history. Their native rulers
have introduced changes such as foreign rulers would hardly have
ventured upon. The adoption of the Chinese language, literature, and
religions from ten to twelve centuries ago, was not occasioned by a
military occupancy of Japanese soil by invaders from China. It was due
absolutely to the free choice of their versatile people, as free and
voluntary as was the adoption by Rome of Greek literature and
standards of learning. The modern choice of Western material
civilization no doubt had elements of fear as motive power. But
impulsion through a knowledge of conditions differs radically from
compulsion exercised by a foreign military occupancy. India
illustrates the latter; Japan, the former.

Japan and her people manifest amazing contrasts. Never, on the one
hand, has a nation been so free from foreign military occupancy
throughout a history covering more than fifteen centuries, and at the
same time, been so influenced by and even subject to foreign psychical
environment. What was the fact in ancient times is the fact to-day.
The dominance of China and India has been largely displaced by that of
Europe. Western literature, language, and science, and even customs,
are being welcomed by Japan, and are working their inevitable effects.
But it is all perfectly natural, perfectly spontaneous. The present
choice by Japan of modern science and education and methods and
principles of government and nineteenth-century literature and
law,--in a word, of Occidental civilization,--is not due to any
artificial pressure or military occupancy. But the choice and the
consequent evolution are wholly due to the free act of the people. In
this, as in several other respects, Japan reminds us of ancient
Greece. Dr. Menzies, in his "History of Religion," says: "Greece was
not conquered from the East, but stirred to new life by the
communication of new ideas." Free choice has made Japan reject Chinese
astronomy, surgery, medicine, and jurisprudence. The early choice to
admit foreigners to Japan to trade may have been made entirely through
fear, but is now accepted and justified by reason and choice.

The true explanation, therefore, of the recent and rapid rise of Japan
to power and reputation, is to be found, not in the externals of her
civilization, not in the pressure of foreign governments, but rather
in the inherited mental and temperamental characteristics, reacting on
the new and stimulating environment, and working along the lines of
true evolution. Japan has not "jumped out of her skin," but a new
vitality has given that skin a new color.




II

HISTORICAL SKETCH


How many of the stories of the Kojiki (written in 712 A.D.) and
Nihongi (720 A.D.) are to be accepted is still a matter of dispute
among scholars. Certain it is, however, that Japanese early history is
veiled in a mythology which seems to center about three prominent
points: Kyushu, in the south; Yamato, in the east central, and Izumo
in the west central region. This mythological history narrates the
circumstances of the victory of the southern descendants of the gods
over the two central regions. And it has been conjectured that these
three centers represent three waves of migration that brought the
ancestors of the present inhabitants of Japan to these shores. The
supposition is that they came quite independently and began their
conflicts only after long periods of residence and multiplication.

Though this early record is largely mythological, tradition shows us
the progenitors of the modern Japanese people as conquerors from the
west and south who drove the aborigines before them and gradually took
possession of the entire land. That these conquerors were not all of
the same stock is proved by the physical appearance of the Japanese
to-day, and by their language. Through these the student traces an
early mixture of races--the Malay, the Mongolian, and the Ural-Altaic.
Whether the early crossing of these races bears vital relation to the
plasticity of the Japanese is a question which tempts the scholar.

Primitive, inter-tribal conflicts of which we have no reliable records
resulted in increasing intercourse. Victory was followed by
federation. And through the development of a common language, of
common customs and common ideas, the tribes were unified socially and
psychically. Consciousness of this unity was emphasized by the
age-long struggle against the Ainu, who were not completely conquered
until the eighteenth century.

With the dawn of authentic history (500-600 A.D.) we find amalgamation
of the conquering tribes, with, however, constantly recurring
inter-clan and inter-family wars. Many of these continued for scores
and even hundreds of years--proving that, in the modern sense, of the
word, the Japanese were not yet a nation, though, through
inter-marriage, through the adoption of important elements of
civilization brought from China and India via Korea, through the
nominal acceptance of the Emperor as the divinely appointed ruler of
the land, they were, in race and in civilization, a fairly homogeneous
people.

The national governmental system was materially affected by the need,
throughout many centuries, of systematic methods of defense against
the Ainu. The rise of the Shogunate dates back to 883 A.D., when the
chief of the forces opposing the Ainu was appointed by the Emperor and
bore the official title, "The Barbarian-expelling Generalissimo." This
office developed in power until, some centuries later, it usurped in
fact, if not in name, all the imperial prerogatives.

It is probable that the Chinese written language, literature, and
ethical teachings of Confucius came to Japan from Korea after the
Christian era. The oldest known Japanese writings (Japanese written
with Chinese characters) date from the eighth century. In this period
also Buddhism first came to Japan. For over a hundred years it made
relatively little progress. But when at last in the ninth and tenth
centuries native Japanese Buddhists popularized its doctrines and
adopted into its theogony the deities of the aboriginal religion, now
known as Shinto, Buddhism became the religion of the people, and
filled the land with its great temples, praying priests, and gorgeous
rituals.

Even in those early centuries the contact of Japan with her Oriental
neighbors revealed certain traits of her character which have been
conspicuous in recent times--great capacity for acquisition, and
readiness to adopt freely from foreign nations. Her contact with
China, at that time so far in advance of herself in every element of
civilization, was in some respects disastrous to her original growth.
Instead of working out the problems of thought and life for herself,
she took what China and Korea had to give. The result was an arrest in
the development of everything distinctively native. The native
religion was so absorbed by Buddhism that for a thousand years it lost
all self-consciousness. Indeed the modern clear demarcation between
the native and the imported religions is a matter of only a few
decades, due to the researches of native scholars during the latter
part of the last and the early part of this century. Even now,
multitudes of the common people know no difference between the various
elements of the composite religion of which they are the heirs.

Moreover, early contact with China and her enormous literature checked
the development of the native language and the growth of the native
literature. The language suffered arrest because of the rapid
introduction of Chinese terms for all the growing needs of thought and
civilization. Modern Japanese is a compound of the original tongue and
Japonicized Chinese. Native speculative thought likewise found little
encouragement or stimulus to independent activity in the presence of
the elaborate and in many respects profound philosophies brought from
India and China.

From earliest times the government of Japan was essentially feudal.
Powerful families and clans disputed and fought for leadership, and
the political history of Japan revolves around the varying fortunes of
these families. While the Imperial line is never lost to sight, it
seldom rises to real power.

When, in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, Japan's conquering arm
reached across the waters, to ravage the coast of China, to extend her
influence as far south as Siam, and even to invade Korea with a large
army in 1592, it looked as if she were well started on her career as a
world-power. But that was not yet to be. The hegemony of her clans
passed into the powerful and shrewd Tokugawa family, the policy of
which was peace and national self-sufficiency.

The representatives of the Occidental nations (chiefly of Spain and
Portugal) were banished. The Christian religion (Roman Catholic),
which for over fifty years had enjoyed free access and had made great
progress, was forbidden and stamped out, not without much bloodshed.
Foreign travel and commerce were strictly interdicted. A particular
school of Confucian ethics was adopted and taught as the state
religion. Feudalism was systematically established and intentionally
developed. Each and every man had his assigned and recognized place in
the social fabric, and change was not easy. It is doubtful if any
European country has ever given feudalism so long and thorough a
trial. Never has feudalism attained so complete a development as it
did in Japan under the Tokugawa régime of over 250 years.

During this period no influences came from other lands to disturb the
natural development. With the exception of three ships a year from
Holland, an occasional stray ship from other lands, and from fifteen
to twenty Dutchmen isolated in a little island in the harbor of
Nagasaki, Japan had no communication with foreign lands or alien
peoples.

Of this period, extending to the middle of the present century, the
ordinary visitor and even the resident have but a superficial
knowledge. All the changes that have taken place in Japan, since the
coming of Perry in 1854, are attributed by the easy-going tourist to
the external pressure of foreign nations. But such travelers know
nothing of the internal preparations that had been making for
generations previous to the arrival of Perry. The tourist is quite
ignorant of the line of Japanese scholars that had been undermining
the authority of the military rulers, "the Tokugawa," in favor of the
Imperial line which they had practically supplanted.

The casual student of Japan has been equally ignorant of the real
mental and moral caliber of the Japanese. Dressed in clothing that
appeared to us fantastic, and armed with cumbersome armor and
old-fashioned guns, it was easy to jump to the conclusion that the
people were essentially uncivilized. We did not know the intellectual
discipline demanded of one, whether native or foreign, who would
master the native language or the native systems of thought. We forgot
that we appeared as grotesque and as barbarous to them as they to us,
and that mental ability and moral worth are qualities that do not show
on the surface of a nation's civilization. While they thought us to be
"unclean," "dogs," "red-haired devils," we perhaps thought them to be
clever savages, or at best half-civilized heathen, without moral
perceptions or intellectual ability.

Of Old Japan little more needs to be said. Without external commerce,
there was little need for internal trade; ships were small; roads were
footpaths; education was limited to the samurai, or military class,
retainers of the daimyo, "feudal lords"; inter-clan travel was limited
and discouraged; Confucian ethics was the moral standard. From the
beginning of the seventeenth century Christianity was forbidden by
edict, and was popularly known as the "evil way"; Japan was thought to
be especially sacred, and the coming of foreigners was supposed to
pollute the land and to be the cause of physical evils. Education, as
in China, was limited to the Chinese classics. Mathematics, general
history, and science, in the modern sense, were of course wholly
unknown. Guns and powder were brought from the West in the sixteenth
century by Spaniards and Portuguese, but were never improved.
Ship-building was the same in the middle of the nineteenth century as
in the middle of the sixteenth, perhaps even less advanced.
Architecture had received its great impulse from the introduction of
Buddhism in the ninth and tenth centuries and had made no material
improvement thereafter.

But while there was little progress in the external and mechanical
elements of civilization, there was progress in other respects. During
the "great peace," first arose great scholars. Culture became more
general throughout the nation. Education was esteemed. The corrupt
lives of the priests were condemned and an effort was made to reform
life through the revival of a certain school of Confucian teachers
known as "Shin-Gaku"--"Heart-Knowledge." Art also made progress, both
pictorial and manual. It would almost seem as if modern artificers and
painters had lost the skill of their forefathers of one or two hundred
years ago.

Many reasons explain the continuance of the old political and social
order: the lack of a foreign foe to compel abandonment of the tribal
organisation; the mountainous nature of the country with its slow,
primitive means of intercommunication; the absence of all idea of a
completely centralized nation. Furthermore, the principle of complete
subordination to superiors and ancestors had become so strong that
individual innovations were practically impossible. Japan thus lacked
the indispensable key to further progress, the principle of
individualism. The final step in the development of her nationality
has been taken, therefore, only in our own time.

Old Japan seemed absolutely committed to a thorough-going antagonism
to everything foreign. New Japan seems committed to the opposite
policy. What are the steps by which she has effected this apparent
national reversal of attitude?

We should first note that the absolutism of the Tokugawa Shogunate
served to arouse ever-growing opposition because of its stern
repression of individual opinion. It not only forbade the Christian
religion, but also all independent thought in religious philosophy and
in politics. The particular form of Confucian moral philosophy which
it held was forced on all public teachers of Confucianism. Dissent was
not only heretical, but treasonable. Although, by its military
absolutism, the Tokugawa rule secured the great blessing of peace,
lasting over two hundred years, and although the curse of Japan for
well-nigh a thousand preceding years had been fierce inter-tribal and
inter-family wars and feuds, yet it secured that peace at the expense
of individual liberty of thought and act. It thus gradually aroused
against itself the opposition of many able minds. The enforced peace
rendered it possible for these men to devote themselves to problems of
thought and of history. Indeed, they had no other outlet for their
energies. As they studied the history of the past and compared their
results with the facts of the present, it gradually dawned on the
minds of the scholars of the eighteenth century, that the Tokugawa
family were exercising functions of government which had never been
delegated to them; and that the Emperor was a poverty-stricken puppet
in the hands of a family that had seized the military power and had
gradually absorbed all the active functions of government, together
with its revenues.

It is possible for us to see now that these early Japanese scholars
idealized their ancient history, and assigned to the Emperor a place
in ancient times which in all probability he has seldom held. But,
however that may be, they thought their view correct, and held that
the Emperor was being deprived of his rightful rule by the Tokugawa
family.

These ideas, first formulated in secret by scholars, gradually
filtered down, still in secrecy, and were accepted by a large number
of the samurai, the military literati of the land. Their opposition to
the actual rulers of the land, aroused by the individual-crushing
absolutism of the Tokugawa rule, naturally allied itself to the
religious sentiment of loyalty to the Emperor. Few Westerners can
appreciate the full significance of this fact. Throughout the
centuries loyalty to the Emperor has been considered a cardinal
virtue. With one exception, according to the popular histories, no one
ever acknowledged himself opposed to the Emperor. Every rebellion
against the powers in actual possession made it the first aim to gain
possession of the Emperor, and proclaim itself as fighting for him.
When, therefore, the scholars announced that the existing government
was in reality a usurpation and that the Emperor was robbed of his
rightful powers, the latent antagonism to the Tokugawa rule began to
find both intellectual and moral justification. It could and did
appeal to the religious patriotism of the people. It is perhaps not
too much to say that the overthrow of the Tokugawa family and the
restoration of the Imperial rule to the Imperial family would have
taken place even though there had been no interference of foreign
nations, no extraneous influences. But equally certain is it that
these antagonisms to the ruling family were crystallized, and the
great internal changes hastened by the coming in of the aggressive
foreign nations. How this external influence operated must and can be
told in a few words.

When Admiral Perry negotiated his treaty with the Japanese, he
supposed he was dealing with responsible representatives of the
government. As was later learned, however, the Tokugawa rulers had not
secured the formal assent of the Emperor to the treaty. The Tokugawa
rulers and their counselors, quite as much as the clan-rulers, wished
to keep the foreigners out of the country, but they realized their
inability. The rulers of the clans, however, felt that the Tokugawa
rulers had betrayed the land; they were, accordingly, in active
opposition both to the foreigners and to the national rulers. When the
foreigners requested the Japanese government, "the Tokugawa
Shogunate," to carry out the treaties, it was unable to comply with
the request because of the antagonism of the clan-rulers. When the
clan-rulers demanded that the government annul the treaties and drive
out the hated and much-feared foreigners, it found itself utterly
unable to do so, because of the formidable naval power of the
foreigners.

As a consequence of this state of affairs, a few serious collisions
took place between the foreigners and the two-sworded samurai,
retainers of the clan-rulers. The Tokugawa rulers apparently did their
best to protect the foreigners, and, when there was no possible method
of evasion, to execute the treaties they had made. But they could not
control the clans already rebellious. A few murders of foreigners,
followed by severe reprisals, and two bombardments of native towns by
foreign gunboats, began to reveal to the military class at large that
no individual or local action against the foreigners was at all to be
thought of. The first step necessary was the unification of the Empire
under the Imperial rule. This, however, could be done only by the
overthrow of the Tokugawa Shogunate; which was effected in 1867-68
after a short struggle, marked by great clemency.

We thus realize that the overthrow of the Shogunate as also the final
abolishment of feudalism with its clans, lords, and hereditary rulers,
and the establishment of those principles of political and personal
centralization which lie at the foundation of real national unity, not
only were hastened by, but in a marked degree dependent on, the
stimulus and contribution of foreigners. They compelled a more
complete Japanese unity than had existed before, for they demanded
direct relations with the national head. And when treaty negotiations
revealed the lack of such a head, they undertook to show its necessity
by themselves punishing those local rulers who did not recognize the
Tokugawa headship.

With the establishment of the Emperor on the throne, began the modern
era in Japanese history, known in Japan as "Meiji"--"Enlightened
Rule."

But not even yet was the purpose of the nation attained, namely, the
expulsion of the polluters of the sacred soil of Japan. As soon as the
new government was established and had turned its attention to foreign
affairs, it found itself in as great a dilemma as had its
predecessors, the Tokugawa rulers. For the foreign governments
insisted that the treaties negotiated with the old government should
be accepted in full by the new. It was soon as evident to the new
rulers as it had been to the old that direct and forcible resistance
to the foreigners was futile. Not by might were they to be overcome.
Westerners had, however, supplied the ideals whereby national,
political unity was to be secured. Mill's famous work on
"Representative Government" was early translated, and read by all the
thinking men of the day. These ideas were also keenly studied in their
actual workings in the West. The consequence was that feudalism was
utterly rejected and the new ideas, more or less modified, were
speedily adopted, even down to the production of a constitution and
the establishment of local representative assemblies and a national
diet. In other words, the theories and practices of the West in regard
to the political organization of the state supplied Japan with those
new intellectual variations which were essential to the higher
development of her own national unity.

A further point of importance is the fact that at the very time that
the West applied this pressure and supplied Japan with these political
ideals she also put within her reach the material instruments which
would enable her to carry them into practice. I refer to steam
locomotion by land and sea, the postal and telegraphic systems of
communication, the steam printing press, the system of popular
education, and the modern organization of the army and the navy. These
instruments Japan made haste to acquire. But for these, the rapid
transformation of Old Japan into New Japan would have been an
exceedingly long and difficult process. The adoption of these tools of
civilization by the central authority at once gave it an immense
superiority over any local force. For it could communicate speedily
with every part of the Empire, and enforce its decisions with a
celerity and a decisiveness before unknown. It became once more the
actual head of the nation.

We have thus reached the explanation of one of the most astonishing
changes in national attitude that history has to record, and the new
attitude seems such a contradiction of the old as to be inexplicable,
and almost incredible. But a better knowledge of the facts and a
deeper understanding of their significance will serve to remove this
first impression.

What, then, did the new government do? It simply said, "For us to
drive out these foreigners is impossible; but neither is it desirable.
We need to know the secrets of their power. We must study their
language, their science, their machinery, their steamboats, their
battle-ships. We must learn all their secrets, and then we shall be
able to turn them out without difficulty. Let us therefore restrict
them carefully to the treaty ports, but let us make all the use of
them we can."

This has virtually been the national policy of Japan ever since. And
this policy gained the acceptance of the people as a whole with
marvelous readiness, for a reason which few foreigners can appreciate.
Had this policy been formulated and urged by the Tokugawa rulers,
there is no probability that it would have been accepted. But because
it was, ostensibly at least, the declared will of the Emperor, loyalty
to him, which in Japan is both religion and patriotism, led to a
hearty and complete acceptance which could hardly have been realized
in any other land. During the first year of his "enlightened" rule
(1868), the Emperor gave his sanction to an Edict, the last two
clauses of which read as follows:

     "The old, uncivilized way shall be replaced by the eternal
     principles of the universe.

     "The best knowledge shall be sought throughout the world, so as to
     promote the Imperial welfare."

It is the wide acceptance of this policy, which, however, is in accord
with the real genius of the people, that has transformed Japan. It has
sent hundreds of its young men to foreign lands to learn and bring
back to Japan the secrets of Western power and wealth; it has
established roads and railways, postal and telegraphic facilities, a
public common-school system, colleges and a university in which
Western science, history, and languages have been taught by foreign
and foreign-trained instructors; daily, weekly, and monthly papers and
magazines; factories, docks, drydocks; local and foreign commerce;
representative government--in a word, all the characteristic features
of New Japan. The whole of New Japan is only the practical carrying
out of the policy adopted at the beginning of the new era, when it was
found impossible to cast out the foreigners by force. Brute force
being found to be out of the question, resort was thus made to
intellectual force, and with real success.

The practice since then has not been so much to retain the foreigner
as to learn of him and then to eliminate him. Every branch of learning
and industry has proved this to be the consistent Japanese policy. No
foreigner may hope to obtain a permanent position in Japanese employ,
either in private firms or in the government. A foreigner is useful
not for what he can do, but for what he can teach. When any Japanese
can do his work tolerably well, the foreigner is sure to be dropped.

The purpose of this volume does not require of us a minute statistical
statement of the present attainments of New Japan. Such information
may be procured from Henry Norman's "Real Japan," Ransome's "Japan in
Transition," and Newton's "Japan: Country, Court, and People." It is
enough for us to realize that Japan has wholly abandoned or profoundly
modified all the external features of her old, her distinctively
Oriental civilization and has replaced them by Occidental features. In
government, she is no longer arbitrary, autocratic, and hereditary,
but constitutional and representative. Town, provincial, and national
legislative assemblies are established, and in fairly good working
order, all over the land. The old feudal customs have been replaced by
well codified laws, which are on the whole faithfully administered
according to Occidental methods. Examination by torture has been
abolished. The perfect Occidentalization of the army, and the creation
of an efficient navy, are facts fully demonstrated to the world. The
limited education of the few--- and in exclusively Chinese
classics--has given place to popular education. Common schools number
over 30,000, taught by about 100,000 teachers (4278 being women),
having over 4,500,000 pupils (over 1,500,000 being girls). The school
accommodation is insufficient; it is said that 30,000 additional
teachers are needed at once. Middle and high schools throughout the
land are rejecting nearly one-half of the student applicants for lack
of accommodation.

Feudal isolation, repression, and seclusion have given way to free
travel, free speech, and a free press. Newspapers, magazines, and
books pour forth from the universal printing press in great profusion.
Twenty dailies issue in the course of a year over a million copies
each, while two of them circulate 24,000,000 and 21,000,000 copies,
respectively.

Personal, political, and religious liberty has been practically secure
now for over two decades, guaranteed by the constitution, and enforced
by the courts.

Chinese medical practice has largely been replaced by that from the
West, although many of the ignorant classes still prefer the old
methods. The government enforces Western hygienic principles in all
public matters, with the result that the national health has improved
and the population is growing at an alarming rate. While in 1872 the
people numbered 33,000,000, in 1898 they numbered 45,000,000. The
general scale of living for the common people has also advanced
conspicuously. Meat shops are now common throughout the land--a thing
unknown in pre-Meiji times--and rice, which used to be the luxury of
the wealthy few, has become the staple necessity of the many.

Postal and telegraph facilities are quite complete. Macadamized roads
and well-built railroads have replaced the old footpaths, except in
the most mountainous districts. Factories of many kinds are appearing
in every town and city. Business corporations, banks, etc., which
numbered only thirty-four so late as 1864 are now numbered by the
thousand, and trade flourishes as in no previous period of Japanese
history. Instead of being a country of farmers and soldiers, Japan is
to-day a land of farmers and merchants. Wealth is growing apace.
International commerce, too, has sprung up and expanded phenomenally.
Japanese merchant steamers may now be seen in every part of the world.

All these changes have taken place within about three decades, and so
radical have they been,--so productive of new life in Japan,--that
some have urged the re-writing of Japanese history, making the first
year of Meiji (1868) the year one of Japan, instead of reckoning from
the year in which Jimmu Tenno is said to have ascended the throne,
2560 years ago (B.C. 660).

The way in which Japanese regard the transformations produced by the
"restoration" of the present Emperor, upon the overthrow of the
"Bakufu," or "Curtain Government," may be judged from the following
graphic paragraph from _The Far East_:

     "The Restoration of Meiji was indeed the greatest of revolutions
     that this island empire ever underwent. Its magic wand left
     nothing untouched and unchanged. It was the Restoration that
     overthrew the Tokugawa Shogunate, which reigned supreme for over
     two centuries and a half. It was the Restoration that brought us
     face to face with the Occidentals. It was the Restoration that
     pulled the demigods of the Feudal lords down to the level of the
     commoners. It was the Restoration that deprived the samurai of
     their fiefs and reduced them to penury. It was the Restoration that
     taught the people to build their houses of bricks and stones and to
     construct ships and bridges of iron instead of wood. It was the
     Restoration that informed us that eclipses and comets are not to be
     feared, and that earthquakes are not caused by a huge cat-fish in
     the bottom of the earth. It was the Restoration that taught the
     people to use the "drum-backing" thunder as their messenger, and to
     make use of the railroad instead of the palanquin. It was the
     Restoration that set the earth in motion, and proved that there is
     no rabbit in the moon. It was the Restoration that bestowed on
     Socrates and Aristotle the chairs left vacant by Confucius and
     Mencius. It was the Restoration that let Shakspere and Goethe take
     the place of Bakin and Chikamatsu. It was the Restoration that
     deprived the people of the swords and topnots. In short, after the
     Restoration a great change took place in administration, in art, in
     science, in literature, in language spoken and written, in taste,
     in custom, in the mode of living, nay in everything" (p. 541).

A natural outcome of the Restoration is the exuberant patriotism that
is so characteristic a feature of New Japan. The very term
"ai-koku-shin" is a new creation, almost as new as the thing. This
word is an incidental proof of the general correctness of the
contention of this chapter that true nationality is a recent product
in Japan. The term, literally translated, is "love-country heart"; but
the point for us to notice particularly is the term for country,
"koku"; this word has never before meant the country as a whole, but
only the territory of a clan. If I wish to ask a Japanese what part
of Japan is his native home, I must use this word. And if a Japanese
wishes to ask me which of the foreign lands I am a native of, he must
use the same word. The truth is that Old Japan did not have any common
word corresponding to the English term, "My country." In ancient
times, this could only mean, "My clan-territory." But with the passing
away of the clans the old word has taken on a new significance. The
new word, "ai-koku-shin," refers not to love of clan, but to love of
the whole nation. The conception of national unity has at last seized
upon the national mind and heart, and is giving the people an
enthusiasm for the nation, regardless of the parts, which they never
before knew. Japanese patriotism has only in this generation come to
self-consciousness. This leads it to many a strange freak. It is
vociferous and imperious, and often very impractical and Chauvinistic.
It frequently takes the form of uncompromising disdain for the
foreigner, and the most absolute loyalty to the Emperor of Japan; it
demands the utmost respect of expression in regard to him and the form
of government he has graciously granted the nation. The slightest hint
or indirect suggestion of defect or ignorance, or even of limitation,
is most vehemently resented.

A few illustrations of the above statements from recent experience
will not be out of place. In August, 1891, the Minister of Education,
Mr. Y. Osaki, criticising the tendency in Japan to pay undue respect
to moneyed men, said, in the course of a long speech, "You Japanese
worship money even more reverently than the Americans do. If you had a
republic as they have, I believe you would nominate an Iwazaki or a
Mitsui to be president, whereas they don't think of nominating a
Vanderbilt or a Gould." It was not long before a storm was raging
around his head because of this reference to a republican form of
government as a possibility in Japan. The storm became so fierce that
he was finally compelled to resign his post and retire, temporarily,
from political life.

In October, 1898, the High Council of Education was required to
consider various questions regarding the conduct of the educational
department after the New Treaties should come into force. The most
important question was whether foreigners should be allowed to have a
part in the education of Japanese youth. The general argument, and
that which prevailed, was that this should not be allowed lest the
patriotism of the children be weakened. So far as appears but one
voice was raised for a more liberal policy. Mr. Y. Kamada maintained
that "patriotism in Japan was the outcome of foreign intercourse.
Patriotism, that is to say, love of country--not merely of fief--and
readiness to sacrifice everything for its sake, was a product of the
Meiji era."

In 1891 a teacher in the Kumamoto Boys' School gave expression to the
thought in a public address that, as all mankind are brothers, the
school should stand for the principle of universal brotherhood and
universal goodwill to men. This expression of universalism was so
obnoxious to the patriotic spirit of so large a number of the people
of Kumamoto Ken, or Province, that the governor required the school to
dismiss that teacher. There is to-day a strong party in Japan which
makes "Japanism" their cry; they denounce all expressions of universal
good-will as proofs of deficiency of patriotism. There are not wanting
those who see through the shallowness of such views and who vigorously
oppose and condemn such narrow patriotism. Yet the fact that it exists
to-day with such force must be noted and its natural explanation, too,
must not be forgotten. It is an indication of self-conscious
nationality.

That this love of country, even this conception of country, is a
modern thing will appear from two further facts. Until modern times
there was no such thing as a national flag. The flaming Sun on a field
of white came into existence as a national flag only in 1859. The use
of the Sun as the symbol for the Emperor has been in vogue since 700
A.D., the custom having been adopted from China. "When in 1859 a
national flag corresponding to those of Europe became necessary, the
Sun Banner naturally stepped into the vacant place."[A]

The second fact is the recent origin of the festival known as
"Kigensetsu." It occurs on February 11 and celebrates the alleged
accession of Jimmu Tenno, the first Emperor of Japan, to the throne
2560 years ago (660 B.C.). The festival itself, however, was
instituted by Imperial decree ten years ago (1890).

The transformation which has come over Japan in a single generation
requires interpretation. Is the change real or superficial? Is the new
social order "a borrowed trumpery garment, which will soon be rent by
violent revolutions," according to the eminent student of racial
psychology, Professor Le Bon, or is it of "a solid nature" according
to the firm belief of Mr. Stanford Ransome, one of the latest writers
on Japan?

This is the problem that will engage our attention more or less
directly throughout this work. We shall give our chief thought to the
nature and development of Japanese racial characteristics, believing
that this alone gives the light needed for the solution of the
problem.[B]




III

THE PROBLEM OF PROGRESS


What constitutes progress? And what is the true criterion for its
measurement? In adopting Western methods of life and thought, is Japan
advancing or receding? The simplicity of the life of the common
people, their freedom from fashions that fetter the Occidental, their
independence of furniture in their homes, their few wants and fewer
necessities--these, when contrasted with the endless needs and demands
of an Occidental, are accepted by some as evidences of a higher stage
of civilization than prevails in the West.

The hedonistic criterion of progress is the one most commonly adopted
in considering the question as to whether Japan is the gainer or the
loser by her rapid abandonment of old ways and ideas and by her
equally rapid adoption of Western ones in their place. Yet this appeal
to happiness seems to me a misleading because vague, if not altogether
false, standard of progress. Those who use it insist that the people
of Japan are losing their former happiness under the stress of new
conditions. Now there can be no doubt that during the "Kyu-han jidai,"
the times before the coming in of Western waves of life, the farmers
were a simple, unsophisticated people; living from month to month with
little thought or anxiety. They may be said to have been happy. The
samurai who lived wholly on the bounty of the daimyo led of course a
tranquil life, at least so far as anxiety or toil for daily rice and
fish was concerned. As the fathers had lived and fought and died, so
did the sons. To a large extent the community had all things in
common; for although the lord lived in relative luxury, yet in such
small communities there never was the great difference between classes
that we find in modern Europe and America. As a rule the people were
fed, if there was food. The socialistic principle was practically
universal. Especially was emphasis laid on kinship. As a result, save
among the outcast classes, the extremes of poverty did not exist.

Were we to rest our inquiries at this point, we might say that in
truth the Japanese had attained the summit of progress; that nothing
further could be asked. But pushing our way further, we find that the
peace and quiet of the ordinary classes of society were accompanied by
many undesirable features.

Prominent among them was the domineering spirit of the military class.
They alone laid claim to personal rights, and popular stories are full
of the free and furious ways in which they used their swords. The
slightest offense by one of the swordless men would be paid for by a
summary act of the two-sworded swashbucklers, while beggars and
farmers were cut down without compunction, sometimes simply to test a
sword. In describing those times one man said to me, "They used to cut
off the heads of the common people as farmers cut off the head of the
daikon" (a variety of giant radish). I have frequently asked my
Japanese friends and acquaintances, whether, in view of the increasing
difficulties of life under the new conditions, the country would not
like to return to ancient times and customs. But none have been ready
to give me an affirmative reply. On detailed questioning I have always
found that the surly, domineering methods, the absolutism of the
rulers, and the defenselessness of the people against unjust arbitrary
superiors would not be submitted to by a people that has once tasted
the joy arising from individual rights and freedom and the manhood
that comes from just laws for all.

A striking feature of those Japanese who are unchanged by foreign ways
is their obsequious manner toward superiors and officials. The lordly
and oftentimes ruthless manner of the rulers has naturally cowed the
subject. Whenever the higher nobility traveled, the common people were
commanded to fall on the ground in obeisance and homage. Failure to do
so was punishable with instant death at the hands of the retainers
who accompanied the lord. During my first stay in Kumamoto I was
surprised that farmers, coming in from the country on horseback,
meeting me as I walked, invariably got down from their horses,
unfastened the handkerchiefs from their heads, and even took off their
spectacles if there were nothing else removable. These were signs of
respect given to all in authority. Where my real status began to be
generally known, these signs of politeness gave place to rude staring.
It is difficult for the foreigner to appreciate the extremes of the
high-handed and the obsequious spirit which were developed by the
ancient form of government. Yet it is comparatively easy to
distinguish between the evidently genuine humility of the non-military
classes and the studied deference of the dominant samurai.

Another feature of the old order of things was the emptiness of the
lives of the people. Education was rare. Limited to the samurai, who
composed but a fraction of the population, it was by no means
universal even among them. And such education as they had was confined
to the Chinese classics. Although there were schools in connection
with some of the temples, the people as a whole did not learn to read
or write. These were accomplishments for the nobility and men of
leisure. The thoughts of the people were circumscribed by the narrow
world in which they lived, and this allowed but an occasional
glimpse of other clans through war or a chance traveler. For, in those
times, freedom of travel was not generally allowed. Each man, as a
rule, lived and labored and died where he was born. The military
classes had more freedom. But when we contrast the breadth of thought
and outlook enjoyed by the nation to-day, through newspapers and
magazines, with the outlook and knowledge of even the most progressive
and learned of those of ancient times, how contracted do their lives
appear!

A third feature of former times is the condition of women during those
ages. Eulogizers of Old Japan not only seem to forget that working
classes existed then, but also that women, constituting half the
population, were essential to the existence of the nation. Though
allowing more freedom than was given to women in other Oriental
nations, Japan did not grant such liberty as is essential to the full
development of her powers. "Woman is a man's plaything" expresses a
view still held in Japan. "Woman's sole duty is the bearing and
rearing of children for her husband" is the dominant idea that has
determined her place in the family and in the state for hundreds of
years. That she has any independent interest or value as a human being
has not entered into national conception. "The way in which they are
treated by the men has hitherto been such as might cause a pang to any
generous European heart.... A woman's lot is summed up in what is
termed 'the three obediences,' obedience, while yet unmarried, to a
father; obedience, when married, to a husband; obedience, when
widowed, to a son. At the present moment the greatest duchess or
marchioness in the land is still her husband's drudge. She fetches and
carries for him, bows down humbly in the hall when my lord sallies
forth on his good pleasure."[C] "The Greater Learning for Women," by
Ekken Kaibara (1630-1714), an eminent Japanese moralist, is the name
of a treatise on woman's duties which sums up the ideas common in
Japan upon this subject. For two hundred years or more it has been
used as a text-book in the training of girls. It enjoins such abject
submission of the wife to her husband, to her parents-in-law, and to
her other kindred by marriage, as no self-respecting woman of Western
lands could for a moment endure. Let me prove this through a few
quotations.

"A woman should look on her husband as if he were Heaven itself and
never weary of thinking how she may yield to her husband, and thus
escape celestial castigation." "Woman must form no friendships and no
intimacy, except when ordered to do so by her parents or by the
middleman. Even at the peril of her life, must she harden her heart
like a rock or metal, and observe the rules of propriety." "A woman
has no particular lord. She must look to her husband as her lord and
must serve him with all reverence and worship, not despising or
thinking lightly of him. The great life-long duty of a woman is
obedience.... When the husband issues his instructions, the wife must
never disobey them.... Should her husband be roused to anger at any
time, she must obey him, with fear and trembling." Not one word in all
these many and specific instructions hints at love and affection. That
which to Western ears is the sweetest word in the English language,
the foundation of happiness in the home, the only true bond between
husband and wife, parents and children--LOVE--does not once appear in
this the ideal instruction for Japanese women.

Even to this day divorce is the common occurrence in Japan. According
to Confucius there are seven grounds of divorce: disobedience,
barrenness, lewd conduct, jealousy, leprosy or any other foul or
incurable disease, too much talking, and thievishness. "In plain
English, a man may send away his wife whenever he gets tired of her."

Were the man's duties to the wife and to her parents as minutely
described and insisted on as are those of the wife to the husband and
to his parents, this "Greater Learning for Women" would not seem so
deficient; but such is not the case. The woman's rights are few, yet
she bears her lot with marvelous patience. Indeed, she has acquired a
most attractive and patient and modest behavior despite, or is it
because of, centuries of well-nigh tyrannical treatment from the male
sex. In some important respects the women of Japan are not to be
excelled by those of any other land. But that this lot has been a
happy one I cannot conceive it possible for a European, who knows the
meaning of love or home, to contend. The single item of one divorce
for every three marriages tells a tale of sorrow and heartache that is
sad to contemplate. Nor does this include those separations where
tentative marriage takes place with a view to learning whether the
parties can endure living together. I have known several such cases.
Neither does this take account of the great number of concubines that
may be found in the homes of the higher classes. A concubine often
makes formal divorce quite superfluous.

I by no means contend that the women of Old Japan were all and always
miserable. There was doubtless much happiness and even family joy;
affection between husband and wife could assuredly have been found in
numberless cases. But the hardness of life as a whole, the low
position held by woman in her relations to man, her lack of legal
rights,[D] and her menial position, justify the assertion that there
was much room for improvement.

These three conspicuous features of the older life in Japan help us to
reach a clear conception as to what constitutes progress. We may say
that true progress consists in that continuous, though slow,
transformation of the structure of society which, while securing its
more thorough organization, brings to each individual the opportunity
of a larger, richer, and fuller life, a life which increasingly calls
forth his latent powers and capacities. In other words, progress is a
growing organization of society, accompanied by a growing liberty of
the individual resulting in richness and fullness of life. It is not
primarily a question of unreflecting happiness, but a question of the
wide development of manhood and womanhood. Both men and women have as
yet unmeasured latent capacities, which demand a certain liberty,
accompanied by responsibilities and cares, in order for their
development. Intellectual education and a wide horizon are likewise
essential to the production of such manhood and womanhood. In the long
run this is seen to bring a deeper and a more lasting happiness than
was possible to the undeveloped man or woman.

The question of progress is confused and put on a wrong footing when
the consciousness of happiness or unhappiness, is made the primary
test. The happiness of the child is quite apart from that of the
adult. Regardless of distressing circumstances, the child is able to
laugh and play, and this because he is a child; a child in his
ignorance of actual life, and in his inability to perceive the true
conditions in which he lives. Not otherwise, I take it, was the
happiness of the vast majority in Old Japan. Theirs was the happiness
of ignorance and simple, undeveloped lives. Accustomed to tyranny,
they did not think of rebellion against it. Familiar with brutality
and suffering, they felt nothing of its shame and inhumanity. The
sight of decapitated bodies, the torture of criminals, the despotism
of husbands, the cringing obedience of the ruled, the haughtiness of
the rulers, the life of hard toil and narrow outlook, were all so
usual that no thought of escape from such an order of society ever
suggested itself to those who endured it.

From time to time wise and just rulers did indeed strive to introduce
principles of righteousness into their methods of government; but
these men formed the exception, not the rule. They were individuals
and not the system under which the people lived. It was always a
matter of chance whether or not such men were at the head of affairs,
for the people did not dream of the possibility of having any voice in
their selection. The structure of society was and always had been
absolute militarism. Even under the most benevolent rulers the use of
cruel torture, not only on convicted criminals, but on all suspected
of crime, was customary. Those in authority might personally set a
good example, but they did not modify the system. They owned not only
the soil but practically the laborers also, for these could not leave
their homes in search of others that were better. They were serfs, if
not slaves, and the system did not tend to raise the standard of life
or education, of manhood or womanhood among the people. The happiness
of the people in such times was due in part to their essential
inhumanity of heart and lack of sympathy with suffering and sorrow.
Each individual bore his own sorrow and pain alone. The community, as
such, did not distress itself over individuals who suffered. Sympathy,
in its full meaning, was unknown in Old Japan. The barbarous custom of
casting out the leper from the home, to wander a lonely exile, living
on the charity of strangers, is not unknown even to this day. We are
told that in past times the "people were governed by such strong
aversion to the sight of sickness that travelers were often left to
die by the roadside from thirst, hunger, or disease; and householders
even went the length of thrusting out of doors and abandoning to utter
destitution servants who suffered from chronic maladies." So universal
was this heartlessness that the government at one time issued
proclamations against the practices it allowed. "Whenever an epidemic
occurred the number of deaths was enormous." Seven men of the outcast,
"the Eta," class were authoritatively declared equal in value to one
common man. Beggars were technically called "hi-nin," "not men."

Those who descant on the happiness of Old Japan commit the great error
of overlooking all these sad features of life, and of fixing their
attention exclusively on the one feature of the childlike, not to say
childish, lightness of heart of the common people. Such writers are
thus led to pronounce the past better than the present time. They also
overlook the profound happiness and widespread prosperity of the
present era. Trade, commerce, manufactures, travel, the freest of
intercommunication, newspapers, and international relations, have
brought into life a richness and a fullness that were then unknown.
But in addition, the people now enjoy a security of personal
interests, a possession of personal rights and property, and a
personal liberty, that make life far more worthy and profoundly
enjoyable, even while they bring responsibilities and duties and not a
few anxieties. This explains the fact that no Japanese has expressed
to me the slightest desire to abandon the present and return to the
life and conditions of Old Japan.

Let me repeat, therefore, with all possible emphasis, that the problem
of progress is not primarily one of increasing light-heartedness, pure
and simple, nor yet a problem of racial unification or of political
centralization; it is rather a problem of so developing the structure
of society that the individual may have the fullest opportunity for
development.

The measure of progress is not the degree of racial unification, of
political centralization, or of unreflective happiness, but rather the
degree and the extent of individual personality. Racial unification,
political centralization, and increasing happiness are in the
attainment of progress, but they are not to be viewed as sufficient
ends. Personality, can alone be that end. The wide development of
personality, therefore, is at once the goal and the criterion of
progress.




IV

THE METHOD OF PROGRESS


Progress as an ideal is quite modern in its origin. For although the
ancients were progressing, they did it unconsciously, blindly,
stumbling on it by chance, forced to it, as we have seen, by the
struggle for existence. True of the ancient civilizations of Europe
and Western Asia and Africa, this is emphatically true of the Orient.
Here, so far from seeking to progress, the avowed aim has been not to
progress; the set purpose has been to do as the fathers did; to follow
their example even in customs and rites whose meaning has been lost in
the obscurity of the past. This blind adherence was the boast of those
who called themselves religious. They strove to fulfill their duties
to their ancestors.

Under such conditions how was progress possible? And how has it come
to pass that, ruled by this ideal until less than fifty years ago,
Japan is now facing quite the other way? The passion of the nation
to-day is to make the greatest possible progress in every direction.
Here is an anomaly, a paradox; progress made in spite of its
rejection; and, recently, a total volte-face. How shall we explain
this paradox?

In our chapter on the Principles of National Evolution,[E] we see that
the first step in progress was made through the development of
enlarging communities by means of extending boundaries and hardening
customs. We see that, on reaching this stage, the great problem was so
to break the "cake of custom" as to give liberty to individuals
whereby to secure the needful variations. We do not consider how this
was to be accomplished. We merely show that, if further progress was
to be made, it could only be through the development of the
individua